Notes from Bodega: Part II

There ain't a lot to do here, until you factor class in. Then there's no time to do anything. Today seems to be one of our more lax days, with lecture only from 9.30-11am and again from 1-3pm. That being said the rest of the time is spent poring over past student reports, trying to plan our projects, reading 5-8 textbook chapters (depending on your background in physiology -- mine is practically nil), studying preserved fish in the lab, reading and analyzing journal articles for our weekly seminars, and other such classy things. Most days, however, all I can manage is to stumble far enough into my room to collapse onto my bed for a quick pre-dinner nap, since our schedule usually runs 9.30am-12pm lecture/lab, 1-3.30pm lecture/lab, 6pm dinner, and 7.30/8-10pm field trip/seminar/lecture. Last night we had an 8-10pm seminar on the aforementioned journal articles, the night before we went seining for fish, and the previous two nights were labs and orientations of sorts. Mostly I'm just too tired or too stupefied from lecture to think about studying, so I try and recover during daylight hours and end up staying up till the wee hours of the night trying to read dense textbooks/journal articles/lab manuals. Sigh.

In other news... there is no other news. It's very pretty here, but that's not exactly a news flash every time I look out the window. I have seen a bunch of animals, though, ones even not related to our classes: lots of deer; quails scurrying around the brush outside the cafeteria; pelicans, egrets, other sorts of sea birds feeding in the bay around sunset; blue jays perched on branches by the roadside on my morning bike ride to the research station; wild turkeys pecking by the trees at the bottom of the road that leads up to the dorms; seals in Horseshoe Cove poking their heads out of the water at us in interest... we're inundated with nature here. Not that it's a bad thing -- it's very exciting for all us noobs and city people. I miss concrete and street lamps (there's one here) to an extent, although I imagine it wouldn't be so bad if I actually went into town. But that's 3 miles down the road, and I'm tired and busy. They call this Marine Biology boot camp, and boy, they weren't kidding.

I'm on a library computer right now (too lazy to haul my laptop to the lab), so I'll have to upload some of the pictures I've taken later, possibly while I'm home this weekend. I'll spare you the pictures of preserved fish I took from the lab.